Tunnel of Night Page 3
I wandered to the back of the house where the control panel for the security system was. When the system was off, as it was now, a green light glowed on the panel. I hit the switch, arming the perimeter grid. The green light went out and a red light came on. Simple enough.
I disarmed the system, walked to the window, and looked down toward the driveway. I knew there was a small metal box that had something to do with the grid on a post near the entrance. And there it was, barely visible, at the southeast corner of the field—a tiny green light. It faced the house, so that it couldn’t be seen by anyone coming up the drive, approaching through the woods from the east, or down low in a boat on the water. With binoculars, though, it could be easily viewed from the upper part of the field where the shooter had stood.
Whoever had come here from the north ridge had to be in good shape. It was at least a two-mile hike over ledges and through dense forest from North Lake Road to Pop’s property.
“Determined sonofabitch,” I muttered, letting myself out and locking the door.
I COULD HEAR THE HOSPITAL’S MUTED SOUNDS as I drifted, half-conscious, in reverie.
Faces raced in front of my eyes, some colliding, some merging. I recognized one man, but could not recall his name at first. He was moving away from me when I remembered and called to him. He never turned back.
Then Lane thundered into the room.
“Wasn’t Morgan Wylie the one who killed all those kids?” she asked.
“Wylie? Yeah. Why?”
“When I walked in, you were mumbling his name. Why would you be thinking about him?”
Good question. I hadn’t thought about Wylie in years. I shook my head. “When I left my practice, I thought I left it all behind me. Sometimes I think we do our best jobs of deception on ourselves.”
“Come on, Pop, cut the crap. I want to know about Morgan Wylie. What did you do?”
She wanted to know if I had committed yet another murder. Subtlety is a game Lane has not yet mastered.
I closed my eyes. “The killer left the kids nude, except that they always had their socks on. He didn’t want their feet to be cold. Not because he was a nice guy. He was projecting. His feet were always cold because he had a circulatory problem. His father had the same problem and ended up with one foot. Morgan Wylie wore shoes a size too big so he could wear lots of socks. He was on the edge of that investigation for years. They questioned him half a dozen times. He even passed a polygraph. I spent part of a day with him. Told him that feelings of guilt worsened circulatory problems, usually ending with amputation. I said there were studies that showed that people who unburdened themselves kept their feet. Wylie didn’t want to lose his feet, so he confessed.”
I took a deep breath, exhaled, then opened my eyes. “It was a matter of creating a different reality for him.”
My head was throbbing. I was due for another dose of Demerol, but I didn’t want it. My body had to heal, and my mind had to clear. “The State of Texas executed him many years ago. I don’t know why he’s turning up in my head now, but I’m sure there’s a reason.”
Buck Semple was growling at Lane before he had walked all the way into the room. “You were seen up at the lake,” he shouted. “I told you twice to stay out of this thing.”
“She’s a cop, Buck,” I told him. “A homicide detective. Based on what I hear, she’s good at what she does.”
“Lane, stay the hell out of this case,” he barked.
“I can’t do that, Buck,” she said, getting up and walking from the room.
I chuckled softly. I couldn’t believe I was having to deal with these two.
Semple turned his wrath on me. “I heard a few things about what happened in that situation a year or so ago. You don’t work with law enforcement, Lucas. They’ve gotta tag along behind while you do your thing. Lane’s starting to pull the same shit, but the system doesn’t work that way.”
I wanted to tell Buck that the system did not work at all, but thought better of it. He was already cranked.
Police agencies, local and federal, tend to be linear. If an approach is not in the manual—if it does not pass the test of hard, unrelenting logic—it is not used. There is no role for instinct.
The courts are worse, true theaters of the absurd, with witnesses rehearsed like actors, and evidence little more than polished props. Televised trials have done better in the Nielsen ratings than the afternoon soaps.
“Lane isn’t about to compromise your investigation,” I told Semple. “She could be of some help to you. I’m the one who could be the pain in your ass, and I’m not doing much of anything right now.”
“You switched off the security system,” Buck said. “The afternoon you were hit.”
“Yes, yes I did. Chuck was bringing up some wood. Lane was due to arrive. I was getting into the shower.”
“How did the shooter know?”
I have no phone to tap. Never use the things. No one had been out to the house in two weeks. I use the fax sparingly.
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody you locked up?”
“Some of my patients weren’t exactly enamored of me. So, yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve got a couple of computer disks at the house with lists of the dangerous and the delirious.”
He reminded me that it was his case, told me he would be in touch, then stomped out.
Long after Buck—only somewhat mollified—had gone, I stared at the ceiling. Despite his grouchiness, the chief’s arrival had interrupted a conversation that was headed in a direction I did not want to go.
My daughter needed to talk about things that two days ago were nicely straightforward in my head—and now were ominously less so.
EARLY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, LANE AND I HEADED for my place at the lake. Buck didn’t want us anywhere near there, but I was not about to be evicted from my home.
“You could both end up as targets,” he had said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”
He was right, of course. I figured that I might have to break out some of my unused arsenal, but I was not going into Buck’s version of a witness protection program over at the Lakeside Motel.
I had trouble getting into Lane’s little car and was starting to hurt from bouncing around on the dirt roads in her aqua sardine can. “Why didn’t you use the Jeep? Or gotten something bigger?” I complained.
“Wouldn’t make any sense in the city. We’ll be there soon.”
“Not soon enough,” I said, gripping the overhead handle as if my life depended on it. Which it did. “Buck check the house?”
“First thing this morning.”
“We won’t be there for long. Maybe a couple of days.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My horoscope said there was a trip in my future.”
“You read that stuff?”
“Religiously. That and the comics. The rest of the newspaper isn’t worth a damn.”
“You believe it? The horoscopes?”
“About as much as I believe the comics. They’re more entertaining than reading about how Washington is finding new and creative ways to fuck over the poor, the disabled, and the elderly.”
We drove in silence for several minutes, then Lane said, “Pop, we’re not dealing with some asshole running around the lake taking potshots. This guy was gunning for you and we’ve got no idea who the hell he is. What are we gonna do?”
I looked at Lane’s profile, watched as she brushed her hair back from her face. She had driven to Lake Albert expecting to relax—do some fishing, soak up some sun—and to have a serious talk with her old man about his homicidal behavior. Instead, she had found me in the hospital, the house a crime scene, and no one having any idea what murderous wretch might be wandering the woods. It was no wonder that Lane’s grip on her control had slipped a notch.
“I need a little time,” I said gently. “We’ll get the bastard, but I have to do it my way.”
She nodded and glanced over a
t me. “I’m just frazzled, Pop.”
“Lane, the reason I said there was a trip in my future is that I’m convinced this shooter isn’t a local. After my head cleared, I was able to do some thinking. In the nearly six years I’ve lived at the lake, I have gotten to know Buck, Janet, Chuck Logan, a few of the local merchants. That’s about it. With the exception of Buck and Janet, the most anyone knows about me is that I’m a retired shrink. People here respect each other’s privacy. This guy came with an agenda: kill Lucas Frank. I think that he would want to draw a minimum of attention to himself, get his job done, and get out of town. So …”
She snapped a quick incredulous glance at me. “So, what? You’re going after him?”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.
“But, it might?”
She drove into the yard, stopped the car, and switched off the ignition.
“It might,” I said. “Now, would you mind opening the place? I want to go down and look at my lake.”
When I had trouble getting out of the car, Lane came around and gave me a hand.
“I’ll be right in,” I said.
I walked down to the dock. A cold wind blew from the north end of Lake Albert. It was October, the skies wide and clear—too early for a frigid Canadian gale. Still, gusts ripped the surface of the lake into a froth of whitecaps.
I gazed across at Janet Orr’s clapboard house, then north toward the ridge where my shooter had probably begun his trek to my house.
Who are you?
The wind whipped through my hair. Whoever he was, he had almost gotten me.
Death visits, but has to leave empty-handed.
“You can’t have been too happy about that,” I muttered.
I moved away from my windblown shore and walked across the grass and into the house. Lane had turned down my bed, “I want to take a shower first,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been slimed.”
“Where are the computer disks Ginger sends you?” she asked.
Ginger, my former secretary in Boston, was an ardent admirer of VICAP who thought that I should have my own directory of deviants. She was still at it, sending periodic updates.
“The packages are in by the computer. I don’t think I’ve ever opened them.”
I could hear Lane fussing as I wandered into the bathroom. “Where’s my Ivory?” I shouted. “I don’t want stinky soap.”
She couldn’t hear me over the Leonard Cohen she had cranked up on the stereo. I checked the wastebasket, found my soap, then trashed the flowery stuff. I couldn’t believe she had gotten to the soap so fast.
I toweled off, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and curled onto my bed. I must have been asleep within seconds, and I doubt that I shifted position. The next thing I knew, there was a flock of chickadees doing their imitation of an orchestra of flutes and fifes in the morning sun outside my window.
I WALKED INTO POP’S ROOM DURING THE NIGHT. He was still, and peaceful, and sleeping what he had always called “the sleep of a child.”
I stood in the darkness at the foot of his bed and wondered what my father’s dreams were like. I decided that he was so physically exhausted that he probably was not dreaming at all.
In the morning, I got up with the birds, put the coffee on, and decided to take a crack at Pop’s computer database that I had installed on my laptop. Leonard Cohen was grumbling about the Chelsea Hotel when Pop wandered into the study.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Better. I didn’t expect to sleep all night. Guess I just needed my own bed. Do I smell coffee?”
“I made a pot. Sit down and I’ll get you some.”
When I returned with the coffee, I watched as Pop prowled through his books. He yanked out a battered hardcover that looked like an antique. “What’s that?”
“The Monster of Dusseldorf, by Margaret Seaton Wagner. It was published in 1932. I don’t know what’s drawing me to this particular volume, but I’ve learned not to second-guess my instincts. No word from Janet?”
I glanced at the empty fax machine, shook my head, and returned to my work at the computer.
“Hmphh. She didn’t say anything about going out of town.”
Pop curled up with his book, and I continued to bang away at the keyboard. I had installed his disks and had the software operating. Now I wanted to pump my father for characteristics related to the shooter so that I could feed them into a set of search criteria. He was more interested in Margaret Wagner’s description of the exploits of Peter Kurten, a German serial killer from the 1920s and ’30s.
“I’m not fond of computers anyway,” he said. “I agree with the Unabomber’s professed philosophy about technology. Fortunately, I have a different way of expressing it.”
“It’s giving me twelve spaces,” I interrupted, futilely hoping to turn his attention back to the program. “What about ‘crack shot’?”
“Marksman. One of the FBI’s mind hunters’ claims credit for the term ‘serial killer.’ Margaret Wagner came close. She called Peter Kurten a ‘series killer.’ In the 1980s, the feds went to categories and definitions— cooling-off periods, a minimum of three dead, that sort of nonsense. Great fun if you have the mind of an accountant, but not if you want to catch a killer. Where would we be as a civilization without labelers?”
I had a certain fondness for my father’s favorite polemic but enough was enough, “You fully awake now?” I asked.
He nodded happily. “Coffee’s good. Double Italian roast.”
“Whatever that black stuff was in the freezer. Now, are you ready to help me with this?” I nudged, indicating the computer program.
“I’ll learn more from Peter Kurten. You know, I was a labeler all those years that I went to my office. This one’s schizophrenic. That one’s borderline. The one who’s examining the walls for thought-stealing devices is a tad paranoid. Insurance companies and health management outfits require labels so they can determine if a patient needs three sessions or five—as if anything could be cured in that time. Clerks who don’t know a schizoid from a solenoid make those decisions.”
“C’mon, Pop. I need some help.”
“Okay,” he said, sighing. “We don’t know a hell of a lot. So I don’t know why you’re bothering me. He’s bright, and he’s deliberate. He had to do some homework to know that I had a security system in place. Maybe he was here before, saw the perimeter guard, and realized that it can’t be disarmed outside. If you tamper with it, it goes off. So, he could have waited for me to shut down the system, or he knew that I would have it down. I don’t know what that program wants, but I want to get back to my book. Peter Kurten said that the biggest disappointment in his life was that he wouldn’t get to hear his own blood drip into the bucket when they decapitated him. Charming fellow.”
“All right, all right, tell me about him,” I said, leaning back in my chair, giving in to the inevitable. Besides, he obviously had something on his mind and it was bound to be more interesting than the database.
“Kurten fascinates me. He killed his victims in virtually every imaginable manner. He set fire to women. Stabbed them with screwdrivers. Bludgeoned children. Drowned them. He operated on the basis of what he called Compensatory justice.’ Simply stated, his sole motivation was vengeance. He believed that every slight, or perceived affront, gave him license to enter any home, to assault, maim, murder anyone he selected, so that Society received its payback. For years he terrorized an entire city. He said at his trial that he was sending them a message. I think I’m beginning to understand why I woke up drawn to this particular book. Vengeance is a good choice of motivation for our shooter. But for what? What did I do to him? What’s his message?”
In his own way, Pop already was working on the case. His head never stopped working.
While he was mulling through the mind of our anonymous shooter, I pushed myself away from the desk. “I found something for you in the hospital gift shop,” I said, handing him the small package.
“Why do you love them so much?” I asked.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the animal,” he said. “When I was a kid, I identified with one particularly imposing gorilla who was locked in a stone cage at a zoo near the tenement where we lived. He was trapped, and that was how I felt then. Trapped. If he had been left alone and unprovoked in the wilds, he would have lived a relatively peaceful existence. Locked up, taunted, and tortured—as my gorilla was—he could only erupt in a destructive rage.”
“The one in the zoo did?”
“Some kids threw lighted bottles of gasoline into his enclosure. He broke free. The police had to shoot him.”
“God, that’s horrible.”
Pop looked down at the stone carving in his hand. “I imagined that my anger was like a gorilla who lived inside of me. As I grew older, I thought I could even feel him there. My sister always said that I was a fearful child—‘Sad and frightened by the world,’ she said. She was right. I learned fast that it was easy to transform intolerable feelings of sadness, fear, and helplessness into fury.”
“Savvy told me that when you were a kid, you saw Mighty Joe Young about a dozen times.”
“More,” he said. “Do you know the story?”
I shook my head.
“Mighty Joe was a gentle, giant ape, taken from his home in the jungle by a Hollywood nightclub owner. After three drunks slipped backstage and primed Joe with whiskey, the gorilla went on a rampage—tearing the nightclub apart, terrorizing the patrons into a stampede that spilled out onto the city streets. Even his having saved children from a burning house couldn’t redeem him. Joe had to die. My sister took me. I remember our trips up Dale Street to the Warren Theater in Roxbury She didn’t seem to mind.”